Fort Point Channel and Boston Children's Museum

Your Guide

The Fort Point Channel captures Southie’s highly enigmatic character: the many channel bridges define South Boston as both separate from and inevitably joined with the downtown. Here you see the city’s most extensive nineteenth century warehouse district, revived in recent decades by a community of residents, artists, designers, institutions, start-ups, and restaurateurs.

In 1850, this was a muddied tidal estuary. The Fort Point district came to life -- through the construction of wharves and piers and railroad sidings on landfills -- during the booming ship-to-rail mercantile economy of the late nineteenth century. Largely due to the city’s slow growth during much of the twentieth century, the district’s relatively low density and well-proportioned buildings survived.

A View from the Indepedendence Wharf

A view from the Independence Wharf 14th floor observation deck captures Children’s Wharf and the historic warehouse district. Beyond, the enormous roof of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center stands out in contrast. Michael Van Valkenburgh’s plaza and garden project for the Boston Children’s Museum can be seen, lower right.

Image: Hillary Archer

Northern Avenue Bridge and the Federal Courthouse

Northern Avenue Bridge serves as a vital pedestrian connection to downtown. Harry Cobb’s John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse established a pioneering and catalyzing governmental presence on the old Fan Pier in 1999.

Image: Hillary Archer

Children's Wharf from the Evelyn Moakley Bridge

The Children’s Wharf segment of the Harborwalk frames Fort Point Channel, once the site of a British shipping toll. Today’s Tea Party Ship, in the middle of the channel, carries compelling evocations of Boston’s defiance of overreaching British rule in 1773.

Image: Hillary Archer

Downtown Skyline from Fan Pier

The Fan Pier bulkhead provides a great platform for observing the downtown skyline. Contrasting scales can be observed in the Fort Hill buildings of Philip Johnson, SOM’s Rowes Wharf, and Harry Cobb’s Harbor Towers apartments. Peabody and Stearns’ 1915 addition to the Boston Customs House can be seen towering directly beyond the Rowes Wharf arch.

Image: Hillary Archer

Northern Avenue Bridge

This 1908 steel truss swing bridge has carried pedestrian-only traffic across the channel for two decades, but as the South Boston Waterfront developments intensify, the bridge may again carry vehicle traffic onto Northern Avenue.

Image: Hillary Archer

Fort Point Landing and Barking Crab

The Barking Crab brings the atmosphere of a coastal clam shack to one of the nation’s busiest urban waterfronts. Looks like a relic, though it’s only been here since the 1990s.

Melcher Street Warehouses

Alley Between Thomson Place and Farnsworth Street

Renovation and reuse have brought a strong residential and commercial mix to the warehouse district.

Image: Hillary Archer

Summer Street Looking Toward the Financial District

The contrast can be seen here between the scale and material consistency of the protected Fort Point Channel Historic District and the more diverse Financial District, which changed significantly during overheated economic cycles in the 1970s and 80s.